By Min Seong-jae I’ve spent a bit more than two decades in the United States, first as a student and then as a professor. During that time, I noticed a striking trend among Korean students studying abroad: their numbers have dropped sharply. There used to be at least a couple of Korean students in almost every class I attended, and many U.
S. college campuses boasted lively Korean student associations. Not anymore.
These days, I need to look carefully to spot a Korean student on campus. My observation aligns with statistics from Korea’s Ministry of Education. According to their recent survey, the number of Korean students enrolled in overseas postsecondary institutions was 124,320 in 2022, a precipitous drop from a peak of approximately 330,000 in 2010.
Multiple factors seem to be contributing to this decline in Korean students studying abroad. The country’s low birthrate and the overall decrease in the student-age population may be one big reason. Stricter U.
S. regulations on student visas could be another. The COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent restrictions on travel and studying abroad likely played a role as well.
But I suspect there’s a more fundamental shift at play, one that has been evolving over the past decade. The primary reason Koreans are no longer as eager to study abroad may be that they simply don’t feel they need to anymore — or at least, not as much. In the past, studying abroad, particularly in advanced Western nations, carried high prestige and wa.
